Just in time for the Abbotsford Heat hockey to take the ice.  Installation of 64 Wybron Eclipse Dowsers to the suspended Hubbell arena lights is now complete.  The system was design and commissioned by Bernard & Associates.   Dowsers are controlled through the Strand lighting system via DMX 512 while status monitoring is done through a wireless access point.  At the heart of the system is InfoTrace a specialized software that uses bi-directional communications protocol, Remote Device Management (RDM), to facilitate remote addressing and diagnostics for every dowser.  Setup, testing, and troubleshooting for the entire rig is coordinated from a single laptop using the InfoTrace software.   An alert displays the nature of the problem and the exact location.  Troubleshooting is now done in a fraction of the time.  Proactively check the condition of equipment before, during and after a show, track lamp duty cycles to predict lamp failures before they happen, and predict maintenance on equipment. An aperture light sensor detects if the fixture's lamp is on, a voltage Sensor reports the head voltage level, the pass through current sensor measures the amount of current, and unit current sensor measures the amount of current that a unit is consuming, which can be an indicator of motor health. In addition timers tracks how many hours the unit has been in operation since its last maintenance cycle. 

Alert Warnings include:

• • Fan Stopped Warning
• • High Motor Current Warning
• • Fan Off and Lamp On
• • Unit Cleaning Period Reached
• • Init Fail
• • Low Voltage Alert
• • Low Voltage Unit Shutdown

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MORE about the arena:

The Abbotsford Entertainment and Sports Centre has Strand A21 dimmers for aisle light control, SL fixtures as overhead aisles lights, Stagecraft Emergency transfer cabinets, and 24 LiteTouch NEO dimmers in the box suites.

At a cost of over $64 million dollars, the new 7,000-seat entertainment and sports centre was carried out by PBK/GENIVAR in Abbotsford. PBK acted as the designers and architects, and GENIVAR as structural, mechanical, and electrical engineers. Bernard and Associates worked along with Genivar to develop an overhead aisle lighting scheme using theatrical ellipsoidal fixtures.  Extending lamp life and make these lights available for theatrical effects was achieved by using a Strand Lighting dimming system.  Since some the overhead aisles were also part of the emergency egress plan; Stagecraft emergency transfer cabinets were used to transfer power on the load side of the dimmer cabinets to selected light groups. 

The Strand lighting system also provides the infrastructure for future dowser control of the arena sports lights The complex also has 24 luxury suites that feature LiteTouch Neo wall box dimming controls in each suite.  Each Neo is networked together using Ethernet protocol to allow suite light to be dimmed by the front of house staff during such things as the playing of the national anthem.